Aftermath
by Speedy Hobbit
Summary: This is a sequel to my fanfic Merlin Haunted House. Chapter 1: Harry, Ron, and Hermione escort Kendra to the entrance of Hufflepuff House. AU, written preOotP!


Author's note: This is a sequel to "Merlin Haunted House," blah blah blah, you get the drill.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own any characters in the Harry Potter books, I don't own my characters, I don't own myself, I don't oewn my roleplaying game, blah blah blah. Anyhoo, I admin a role-playing game, and the RPG can be found at www.avidgamers.com/raspberryrpg. I did not create the RPG I created, and I don't own it. Yeah.  
  
Kendra returned from the hospital wing on Novmber second, a few days after her dreadful ordeal. Harry, Ron, and Hermione loyally escorted her to the Hufflepuff entrance, behind the unicorn tapestry. Kendra's friends were glad that she was all right, but Kendra herself was in a melancholy mood, with everything she had gone through. Was this similar to how Harry had felt when Cedric had been murdered? Kendra yearned to ask, but felt the question would be in bad taste, so she bit that question back. Instead, the curly-haired Hufflepuff started complaining about something else. "I'm not going to be able to practice for the game now! I might be able to play, but... I haven't had any practice!" Hufflepuff and Gryffindor were scheduled to play one another, perhaps to keep the Gryffindors and Slytherins from finishing one another off in the first match of the year.  
  
Ron blinked. "You play Quidditch? You never told us that... what position?"  
  
To their surprise, Kendra began chuckling, although they could discern that the mirth didn't reach her eyes. "Harry, you're going to hate me."  
  
Harry blinked. "What? Oh!" Comprehension dawned on his face. "You're the new Seeker, aren't you?" Kendra thought that Harry suddenly seemed to go paler as she confirmed his question with a nod. She thought she knew who Harry was thinking about... Cedric. She, Kendra , was replacing the person who had been murdered by Voldemort the previous June. That was how everyone would view her.. the one trying to replace the murdered. Even better, Kendra had almost died herself, just the other day. Eloise Midgen was dead... the grin faded from her face as this little fact registered in her brain. Eloise had died... She would never see the girl in class in class agai. Eloise, who had been shunned by so many of her peers. Eloise, who never seemed to have a real friend. Eloise, who had once called Kendra "the only real friend I've ever had." In the mantime, Kendra had found her annoying, and deeply regretted this now. Eloise was an only child.. how would her mother feel, now that the only family she had was dead?  
  
"KENDRA! Oh, Kendra!" The form of a short, skinny girl with long black hair whizzed by a surprised Harry as Toni Nott threw her arms around Kendra's solidly built form, avoiding her injured arm. "Oh, Kendra, I'm so glad you're okay!" Kendra blinked. Her cousin and neighbor was not high on the list of people she wanted to see. Surprisingly, Toni actually appeared to be showing emotion for once.. she seemed close to tears. Could this mean she was a decent person or cared? Or was the more likely scenario true: that Toni had ulterior motives and was feigning relief? Without meaning to, Kendra pulled herself away slightly. She didn't want Toni to hug her, but she didn't want to be mean either.  
  
Kendra was not the only one stupefied by Toni's demeanor. Harry, Ron, and Hermione, who had edged away from Toni, exchanged surprised glances. In all their years at Hogwarts, Toni had proved herself to be a girl, apathetic to pain, antisocial, almostalways pushing others away. She had verbally bitten off the head of all who attempted to befriend her, and she had gotten into physical scuffles, even those of Millicent Bulstrode's build or larger. It was amazing how the skinniest girls on the year could take on an older girl at least 100 pounds heavier, and victor, though not without injury. When Toni had fought that enormous girl three years above herself, she had succeeded in winning the fight, although she obtained a broken jaw and left wrist, and a frractured kneecap in the process. It figured... Toni was so fragile, despite her haughty bravado. Just from studing her bony 5'1" figure, they wouldn't have been surprised if they'd learned that the pale girl weighed below eighty pounds. They knew her weight now: 74. They had found a small scrap of paper listing the statistic, and it declared that the girl was just seventy-four pounds.  
  
Toni blanched to the point where her ivory complexion became bloodless. What had those loathesome folk done to her cousin? She could understand Kendra's distancing herself from her, although, (though she'd never admit to it), it hurt her deeply. Kendra was judging her by her father, and by her bitterness. She just didn't understand... the bull she'd gone through had not transformed her into a vicious monster! Toni knew she was good at heart, but she didn't act it, as nobody would believe it of her once they learned of her famly tree. Families.. they were supposed to be loving, but Toni's was the bane of her existence. Even worse, her father acted so weet! He gave Toni the impression of meaning it. How was it that he would kill others for Voldemort, yet be so tender to his own relatives, including his Squib sister and her all-Muggle husband? "Well, I'll see you around then," Toni snapped, not wanting to show her hurt, trying to retain an appearance of stolidity. She did an about-face and walked away.  
  
" Well," Kendra said, "I guess this is it. Please don't remember our password, which is "Remember"... oh, no..." The Hufflepuff password had apparently been changed in Kendra's absence. Kendra groaned with annoyance as she absentmindedly adjusted her sling. "Wonderful... I guess you guys ought to leave, I'll just wait until somebody comes..."  
  
"I don't think so, we won't just leave you alone with your feelings just yet" Hermione said, patting her friend's good arm. "We'll leave when somebody comes." Harry and Ron fervently nodded their agreement. Kendra spluttered her arguements, but to no avail. Besides, she felt secret gratitude for their standing by her, especially since she had had a dire experience just a mere few days before. A mere few days... a mere few days which felt like decades to her. It was as if she'd emotionally crossed the line from adolescence to adulthood. Was this how Harry had felt, after that encounter against Voldemort in his first year? No, he had probably never been a child.. after all, his parents had been stolen from him when he was a measly toddler. He unquestionably acted more mature than other boys in his year. Sure, Kendra had seen Ron and Harry fool around on numerous occasions, but both had experienced too much pain to be immature at heart. Then there was Hermione... she, too, had seen a lot of hard times, being another one of Harry's best friends. And, if Kendra remembered correctly, she, like Justin in her own house, had been attacked in their second year. They had experienced more than just niggling, everyday ups and downs. Now Kendra hadtoo... she already had seen hard times, with her mother's alcoholism, but now she had just witnessed much, much worse than one of her mother's drunken tantrums. She had seen somebody die, she had been an inch from death herself, she had felt the Cruciatus Curse... Even now, Kendra still looked hurt. Her left arm was useless, her right arm had a long, though healing, gash on it, her legs also had healing slits...  
  
Hermione patted Kendra awkwardly on her shoulder, discerning that Kendra appeared to be deep in thought. Her eyes were slightly unfocused as if she were in a dream state. She could not even begin to fathom hat her friend was feeling, she didn't know what to say that could possibly lift Kendra's spirits. This was too much... she'd felt thishelplessness in June as well, after Harry beheld the death of Cedric and Voldemort's return to power. "Why do people become like You-Know-Who?" Hermione said out loud, without meaning to. She couldn't understand... what could possibly make a person go evil? Did it have something to do with genetics, or was it merely what a person grew to be? She did not believe that a person could be orn bad to the core. Rather, her opinion was that a person could be pushed to darkness, through trials and tribulations. Harry was the person who came out of anguish stronger... but perhaps Voldemort had felt immense emotional pain himself and faced oppression as a child, and came out of it hardened to his inner soul and extremely bitter? Hermione knew that Voldemort, formerly Tom Riddle had grown up in a Muggle orphanage and had not wanted to return over summer break. Had he perhaps been beaten, starved, and molested, not unlike how the Dursleys treated Harry? She would pity him if he had been abused, but all the same... Harry wasn't exactly killing anybody!  
  
Kendra was still deep in thought when something numbly registered in her mind.. Hermione's question. "Why do people become like You-Know-Who?" What was Hermione's theory? Did she perhaps think it had something to do with the family? Bloodlines which could somehow be dubbed "bad"? She didn't think so somehow, Hermione was one of those who tended to take much grief from some elitist Slytherins for being Muggle-born. But what of Harry and Ron? Harry had the Dursleys for relatives, so it wasn't likely he'd buy the heritage theory either... but what of Ron? Ron was a pure-blood, and exactly the sort of person who would buy into the genetics theory, using the Malfoys as an example. Sure enough, Ron automatically said, "Bad blood." Kendra felt her cheeks grow warm when Ron said these words. Was it her imagination, or had Ron's eyes just flickered pointedly in her direction? Kendra stared at her lap.  
  
"No, you're forgetting my dear guardians the Dursleys, who just so happen to be related to me," Harry said automatically. Now Kendra though that he'd looked at her strangely as well, but figured it was most likely a figment of her paranoia. They couldn't possibly know her secret, could they? For all they knew, Toni was just another student that Kendra offered her empathy and kindness to. It wasn't like Toni ever revealed their relationship for some reason or another, and, having a slight, bony figure, being short, and having fine black hair and brown eyes rather than thick curly light-brown hair and gray eyes, looked nothing like Kendra. It was funny, but Amy, with her dark brown hair and brown eyes exactly the same shade, as well as a slender, lean form, looked as if she were more likely to be Toni's sister than Kendra's. Genes certainly worked in a queer manner. It was odd that Kendra would be the one gray-eyed person in a family of those with blue eyes, or that Amy would have straight hair when her parents and siblings had curls. Toni... Toni, Toni, Toni. The bereaved daughter of a death order, a semi-orphan because her mother had committed suicide ten years earlier, often having macabre thoughts... was it possible that she had the potential to become a Death Eater? Kendra feared for her... Voldemort was certainly likely to approach Toni. Either she would refuse and then Kendra would be bereaved yet again, or she would do the unthinkable: join his side. On the one hand, Toni was fiercely independent and hated being bossed around by anybody, but on the other, Toni seemed acrimonious and apathetic, abhorring the world. Kendra feared her thoughts, herself. There was really nothing like a pernicious experience to truly mess with a person's head. Would she, like Toni, succumb to bitterness?  
  
"Is there anything you'd like to tell us?" Ron asked suddenly. Harry, Ron and Hermione all turned and fixed Kendra with meaningful stares. Kendra caught their eyes, wondering if they knew something.  
  
"What do you mean? About what happened?" Kendra asked, a little bewildered. What did they possibly want her to explain?  
  
"Well... why wasYou-Know-Who after you? What was his purpose in merely having his Death Eaters take you, when he could have just told them to massacre us all on the spot? We weren't at Hogwarts, there are no Charms on Merlin Haunted House to prevent people from Apparating there, as you must have figured out by this point. They only killed Eloise because she seemed to iterfere." Hermione's voice cracked at the last sentence; she felt overcome by her emotions.  
  
Kendra looked down, and bit her lip, saying nothing.  
  
"There is something," said Harry. His voice was dead grave. His mind seemed all jumbled up, twisted and distorted in unimaginable ways. Was Kendra going to admit to her family tree, the very thing he'd learned about the other day? He felt as if he could do with a Pensieve similar to Dumbledore's at the moment. He was trying to articulate all the events of the past few days, of the months preceding the present. Cedric, Eloise, Bertha Jorkins, Mad-Eye Moody, Bartemius Crouch and his son, the old Muggle, the Quidditch World Cup featuring Ireland vying against Bulgaria... Kendra appeared to be searching for words, her face etiolating.  
  
"I don't know how to tell you this..." Kendra said, her voice shaking so badly that it was difficult to comprehend her words. So far, she was being honest. This would be the true test of whether to trust Kendra Eades or not.  
  
"What?" Ron said, sounding as if he were a bit impatient. He didn't want to wait, he was eager to find out if Kendra was trustworthy as soon as posible.  
  
"Can you guys keep a secret?"  
  
Harry, Ron, and Hermione exchanged glances briefly, then nodded simultaneously. This was one of those secrets which should be told to somebody such as Dumbledore, but they didn't know if Davus Nott had even killed or not. Hermione also knew about Kendra's uncle, as Ron and Harry had filled her in even as Kendra had been lying practically lifeless in the infirmary, grievously injured. Kendra must have had her reasons for not turning her uncle in, but whether or not her motives were benign, they would not know until after this conversation. They were almost certain that she was honorable, but they just wanted to double-check before accepting her into their minute circle, and revealing their secrets to her.  
  
"Pease don't tell anyone! Please, nobody must know! I-I have my reasons, after all, he's related to me, and he's all my cousin has! He's really a better parent than my parents, not because he's a wizard and mine are Muggles, but... he's always sane to us, while my mother... she's an alcoholic."  
  
"That's it?" Ron said incredulously. Whether this was true or not he did not know, but if it was... he really did feel pity for Kendra.  
  
"No, not really," Kendra said. "That's another one I'd appreciate you to keep quiet, but... I want to tell you about my uncle. I don't want him to go to prison, I don't want Toni taken away from him... Toni would either be added to my family or else sent to complete strangers. She doesn't need that, she's been through too much already. His house is actually a refuge for Amy and Jared and myself, and John when he was still dependent on adult care. John is nineteen."  
  
"You have three siblings," Hermione said, and Kendra nodded.  
  
"Yeah. Great, I'm stalling again. Anyway, my uncle is a Death Eater."  
  
Harry, Ron, and Hermione exchanged shocked glances, and Kendra wanted to cry. Had she just blown her friendship with them, among everything else? What would their reaction be? 


End file.
